Bed Bath & Beyond

The home goods store is now an online retailer following a relaunch this week by oversaw. com. The company bought all of Bed Bath & Beyond's assets for just over $21 million after it filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. Dominic Reuter joins us now. He is a senior reporter for Insider. Dominic, remind us what led to Bed Bath & Beyond's bankruptcy. Well, long story short, we're going to talk about the long story short, a lot of money, a lot of debt. The company really took on a huge amount of extra obligations over the last couple of years and that was just too much for it to escape. There are other missteps that we can talk about as well. Yeah, it sounds So what's the value here, Bed Bath & Beyond? Is it the name recognition? For a company I mean, it's a customer base. They got everything digital about that company. So Bed Bath & Beyond obviously has been around for over 40 years in various iterations. But that brand really had a huge presence in American life and had a really strong loyalty. It was associated with weddings, with college, all sorts of really key moments in people's lives and it had at its peak about 1,500 locations. So it was everywhere. It's online exclusively now so that's a big, big change. But that is a strong memory that people I think have and a strong brand association that Overstock is counting on, has said that they're counting on. Yeah, it sounds So what does this mean for Bed Bath & Beyond customers? For customers, well, you can't drive to a store anymore. That's gone. But for everything else it's really up to buying this stuff online. The website looks mostly the same. Overstock has been in the digital game from the j They know E-commerce very, very well. And so the people that are running the show now are very competent at this new, at this side of the venture. It's not, again, it's not brick and mortar. There'll probably be fewer coupons going forward because that's just not the way that Overstock really ran its business before. But by and large you'll still be able to buy a lot of the essential home goods, kitchen appliances, bath supplies, et cetera, and a whole other smattering of stuff that Overstock specializes in as well. So just combining two brands that frankly have seen better days make a lot of business sense. I think it makes a lot of sense for Overstock especially. It's not just any company taking this over, it's Overstock. And Overstock has had a hard time itself trying to escape the sort of idea of the liquidation center clearance website when it's actually a regular retailer of home supplies. So that'something that they were having a difficult time doing and it would have cost them a considerable amount of money to get people out of this frame of mind and get those associations sort of separated from them in the first place. And then there was some other sort of interesting political stuff with the former CEO who was actually involved with Mary Bettina, the Russian spy. And so that whole thing is just something that they are ready. That's a whole other segment. I just so people know that's a whole other segment. They'ready to put it behind. Okay, real quick what happens to the physical stores now? Are they sold off and Overstock's going to reap the benefits of that real estate? Overstock bought none of the physical assets so they have no interest in the physical, not even inventory. They only took the name, identity, the branding, the website, the customer lists, the loyalty rewards program. So there's no physicality that Overstock bought in this transaction. That's part of what the deal was. The company has been trying to lease off certain locations. Several have been sold I believe Not all of them have been sold, but many of these stores are in very prime real, really prime locations for retail. So they are good spots to pick up for those that wanted it. D Thank you.